Republican Primary Voters Return to the Ex-President for Now
Prosecuting Trump Could Hand Him the Republican Nomination
If you’re President Biden, and you’re planning to run for reelection, you have to love the polls that show the ex-president rebounding among Republican primary voters. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may be a stronger general election candidate than Trump in swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but he has to make it out of the primary to take on Biden.
Look, it’s early. A lot is going to happen between now and when Republican primary voters pick their presidential nominee. During the 2012 campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, primary voters seemed to latch on to a new favorite every month. National polling showed that Mitt Romney was the favorite early in the cycle, but Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum each had leads at different points while Michele Bachmann polled second in the field for a brief period.
DeSantis was the “new hotness” for a few months after he won reelection by nearly 20 points while many Trump-backed candidates in competitive races took a beating at the ballot box. The poor showing by Trump’s endorsed candidates made many Republican diehards question the ex-president’s viability, and for good reason. He won the 2016 presidential election, but Republicans lost the House in 2018, the White House and the Senate in 2020, and they lost a seat in the Senate in 2022 and have an incredibly thin majority in the House. You can’t say that it was a disaster for Republicans because they won the House, but the 2022 cycle was incredibly underwhelming.
Trump may wear the “loser” label, but he’s in a different category because of the cultish following that he has among Republican primary voters. The potential criminal charges that the ex-president faces in New York, as well as the criminal cases being built against him in Georgia and by the Department of Justice. Many Republican primary voters looked at DeSantis, but these cases are bringing them back to Trump. The attacks DeSantis has faced from Trump, as well as DeSantis’ own recent mishaps, haven’t helped.
Republican primary voters who are swinging back to the ex-president view these cases as political vindictiveness. They’ll never listen to reason if actual criminality can be proven. When Trump said he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters,” there was truth to that. As delusional as it may be, these Republican primary voters believe Democrats hate Trump enough to prosecute him just simply because they have the power to do so.
Keep in mind that nearly 60 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents prefer someone who agrees with them over someone who can win in 2024. As “anti-woke” as DeSantis made his agenda to be, no one brings out the rage from Democrats more than Trump, and that is an incredible motivator when the only real incentive of virtually the entire base of the Republican Party only wants to “own the libs.” It’s just where the party is these days. Consequences be damned.
I don’t care for DeSantis and won’t vote for him, but DeSantis is competitive against Biden. Trump is likely to lose again. If 2022 showed us anything, it’s that the voters Republicans need to win elections are wary of the extremes—whether it’s an extreme anti-abortion position, extreme candidates, or extreme anti-LGBT views—and are looking for a return to normalcy. In the last cycle, Republicans lost independents by 2 points and moderates by 15 points.
To win in the future, Republicans have to win independents and close the gap with moderates. They’re not going to do that with Trump.